Every ceasefire should, in principle, be greeted with joy. Because every human life is precious. Because no one deserves to die. A Jewish mystic philosopher once said: when you kill a human being, you kill a universe. He was right. So much knowledge, so much energy, so much talent, so much diverse potential, so much invested love is wasted with each human being killed. To save a human life, on the other hand, is one of the greatest virtues, in any culture. But wait! Should we now look on Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon as virtuous people?

Let us try to be magnanimous. Every person has the right to a fair trial. And if Sharon is ever put on criminal trial for war crimes (it could happen; it already could have happened), then the Sharm El-Sheikh ceasefire agreement of 2005 should fairly be counted as an extenuating circumstance. Chances are, Sharon might actually – for a change – be saving lives this time, non-Jewish lives too. In that ideal war crimes trial, Sharon's lawyers are even likely to come up with further valid arguments for a relatively lenient sentence. In principle, the same goes for Abbas. Of course, he is not publicly known to have committed war crimes, as opposed to Sharon. But if he did turn out to commit some, then this ceasefire should be tallied in his defence. But let us hope that Abbas really stays clear of committing any crimes at all. It is not going to be easy for him to do so.

Having said that, it is now time for us to look at the limitations of the ceasefire agreement. According to conventional knowledge around the world, fed by innocuous-looking soundbytes distributed by the mass media behemoths and the powerful US government, who would never even dream of referring to the Israeli army as a terrorist organization, the onus is now on the Palestinians for having been violent and having initiated the Second Intifada, for having sent suicide bombers into Israel, and for being the ones most likely to break the ceasefire. As Robert Fisk pointed out in the Independent newspaper today, referring to the language of the ceasefire agreement: The Palestinians have been committing ‘violence’, the Israelis carrying out innocent ‘operations’.

However, the first killings in this Intifada, as well as the previous one, were of Palestinians by Israelis. The Intifada broke out because of deep provocations by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak and because of broken promises ever since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, among other things, referred to below. Also important in this regard: the suicide bombers did not enter the Intifada until after several months of slaughter of Palestinians. By that time, the relative death tolls were 10 per cent Israelis and 90 per cent Palestinians. And still, the total never reached more than 27 per cent Israelis and ended up with 20 per cent.

Yet it is equally important to remember that hundreds of Israelis have been killed as well as the thousands of Palestinians. It is high time to recognize the suffering on each side, to look ahead, prepare to compromise, and be ready to forgive, but never to forget.

And then, there is the structural violence. Suicide bombers killed civilians. Yes, that is criminal. But why? Because Palestinians were being killed slowly – as well as in the more expeditious way referred to above – and they were being denied basic human rights and human dignity while the world was looking the other way. A nation of people has groaned under military occupation for 38 years, longer than anywhere else in the world since the Second World War. They have seen 229,114 dunums (a dunum = 1,000 m˛) of their land stolen, 73,505 dunums of cultivated Palestinian land deliberately destroyed, 1,176,631 trees deliberately uprooted, and 7,703 homes demolished by Israel in the last four years alone. Humiliation is still routine at the military checkpoints, and there are seemingly senseless Israeli restrictions on the import and export of goods, amounting to sabotage of the Palestinian economy. Millions of Palestinians driven away by force to leave their home country are practically unable to return. Wherever you go in the occupied Palestinian territories, you are surrounded by thousands of soldiers, thousands of miles of barbed wire, tens of settlements growing into cities, and up to 730 kilometres of segregation wall.

That is the meaning of structural violence. It does not kill visibly, but slowly and surreptitiously. A nation of people is gradually being pushed into increasingly disconnected and shrinking pieces of land. Their average life expectancy is much lower than that of the invaders and occupiers, their quality of life is much lower.

Peace will not come from a ceasefire agreement, but from an end to the structural as well as the physical violence. But for now, let us rejoice. Universes are being saved.